Word: manichean
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Administration started out with a hardline, aggressive and Manichean set of policies, or pronouncements, that in nearly every instance gave way to compromise and at least outward accommodation. This was true of attitudes toward the Soviet Union, arms control, Central America and the European allies, among others. The need to compromise was symbolized by the resort to bipartisan commissions (the Scowcroft panel on the MX missile, the Kissinger group on Central America) that did extremely useful work and produced sound, generally centrist recommendations, which by no reasonable standard could be described as weak. Despite recent, markedly pacific gestures from...
While it is possible that Updike does not entirely share the Manichean simplicity of this witch's views, he does nothing to counteract the reductionist view of virtue as the lack of strength. The reader feels that Updike's vision although concerned with goodness, does little to characterize just what comprises and defeats...
These policies, of course, result from the heady mixture of myth and fantasy--with but a sprinkling of fact--regarding the Soviet Union that Reagan and his advisors have been sniffing for some time. Yet even if one accepts this naively Manichean world-view, it is increasingly obvious that the great arms grab beg is securing few benefits for the U.S. The $8.5 billion Awacs deal, heralded as the coup that would seal the U.S. Saudi alliance, is already looking like a debacle. Within weeks of the Senate's narrow approval of the sale, members of the Saudi ruling family...